


old college try

by winterfire (fishtank)



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 5+1 Things, Coming of Age, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Trauma, eddie is a sad gay mess, fusion of book and movie canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-15 09:08:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13027809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishtank/pseuds/winterfire
Summary: He shouldn’t be having the thoughts he’s been having at all, but if he can’t stop them, he’d sure as shit better make sure he doesn’t act on them.Five times Eddie couldn't bring himself to tell Richie how he felt, and the one time he finally managed to spit it out.





	1. 1: 1989

**Author's Note:**

> I already have this story written in its entirety but I'm posting it in five different parts since I feel it works better that way. I'm hoping to update on alternate days - time permitting of course, but either way there shouldn't be too long to wait between updates.

_i. 1989_

Eddie is thirteen, and his childhood is over as surely and swiftly as if somebody had taken an ax to it.

His clothes are still soaked through with whatever gunge the monster had vomited over him as he leads the rest of the Losers out of the sewers and into the light, stiff and tacky in places where it’s already started to dry. He’d almost managed to forget about it, in the midst of the fight with adrenaline coursing through his veins, but now it’s impossible to ignore. He feels a morbid compulsion to peel away his own skin and the filth coating it, an itch that’s perpetually just out of reach.

He sees it in the others, too, reality starting to set back in. It’s in Beverly’s vacant stare and the quaver in her voice when she says she can’t go home; in Stan’s face still leaking blood from several unsightly puncture wounds; in the way Bill is still quietly crying, clutching Georgie’s yellow plastic raincoat like a security blanket.

It isn’t fair, Eddie thinks: they defeated the monster, and if this was a story they’d get to live happily ever after. Instead, the only reward they get is to go back to their everyday lives, a prospect which is somehow even more terrifying than a psychotic clown with a taste for human flesh.

They drift away in twos and threes; Ben, ever the gentleman, offers to let Beverly stay with him until they figure out what’s going on with her dad, and then Mike and Bill take it upon themselves to escort Stan home, flanking him on either side like bodyguards. Then it’s just Eddie and Richie and a silence that’s not quite comfortable, but not wholly awkward either, and Eddie takes the opportunity to study the other boy now that they’re alone. Physically, at least, he’s more or less unscathed, but he’s pale and shaking and Eddie knows that mentally he’s going to be just as scarred by this experience as the rest of them.

“What?” Richie demands, when he notices Eddie staring. “Do I have something on my face?”

It’s a terrible joke – he’s nowhere near as disgusting as Eddie is right now, but he’s still been splashing around in a sewer for the better part of the afternoon – but Eddie laughs anyway. Judging from Richie’s expression, it’s only a little bit hysterical.

“You mind if I shower at yours?” he says. “My mom will freak if I come home looking like this.”

He doesn’t mention the other thing, that the last time he spoke to his mother he swore at her and stormed out of the house, clenching his fists so hard that his nails dug into his palms just so he wouldn’t crumble at the sound of her crying for him to come back. He’s honestly been trying not to think about it; the fact that his own mother, the person he’s supposed to be able to trust no matter what, has been feeding him bullshit his whole life in an effort to control him. As it turned out, fighting for his life was a great distraction, but now that the immediate threat is over the anger and heartbreak are seeping back in again. An evil clown, a rotting leper; those are things he can physically attack, punch and kick and scream himself hoarse at. How is he supposed to fight back against somebody trying to _love_ him to death?

Richie’s folks are out when they arrive at his house, and Eddie spends almost forty minutes in the shower, awkwardly scrubbing at himself with his one good arm until his skin is raw and pink, watching the grime sluice away from his body with a sick fascination. He knows he isn’t supposed to get his cast wet, but he doesn’t care; he just wants to feel _clean_ again.

His old clothes are way beyond saving – and even if they weren’t, he’s not sure he’d want to wear them again – so when he finally emerges from under the water he changes into a pair of Richie’s old sweatpants and a faded Zeppelin tee. The entire outfit is miles too big for him, and he feels a little bit ridiculous gripping the waistband of his newly-acquired sweats so they don’t slide down his hips – but the clothes are also soft and warm and still smell faintly of Richie, so he can’t bring himself to care too much.

“Was starting to think you’d drowned in there,” Richie remarks as he exits the bathroom in a cloud of steam; his tone is light, but Eddie can hear the undercurrent of worry in there. “You look cute in my clothes, by the way,” he adds with an outlandish wink, and darts past Eddie into the bathroom before he has chance to respond.

By contrast, Richie is in and out of his own shower in ten minutes, and Eddie uses that time to call his mother from the phone in Richie’s bedroom. He tells her that he’s spending the night at Richie’s and he’ll see her tomorrow, willing himself not to feel guilty at the sound of her sobs coming down the line. It’s even worse when she stops crying and her voice goes harsh and cold, and he hates that even now he knows the truth about everything, there’s still a part of him that wants to apologize if it’ll stop her from sounding like that. _I’m sorry, mommy, I didn’t mean it, I’ll be good. Please just love me again._

He can feel his chest getting tight, and he has to take a puff from the inhaler he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away in order to calm himself down. He doesn’t even know if his asthma is real or not, and that’s maybe the thing he hates most about the whole situation: that it’s thrown everything his mother has ever told him into question, cast doubt over everything he thought he knew.

Richie chooses that moment to walk back into the room, his hair dripping water all over the collar of his t-shirt, and Eddie’s stomach gives a funny twist at the sight of him. It’s a little like the way he’d felt watching Beverly sunbathe at the quarry, only stronger and somehow more real, and he thinks now that maybe he was only trying to convince himself he felt _that way_ about Bev because it’s what’s expected of him. The truth is, he’s felt that strange, hypnotic pull around Richie before, but never realized quite what it meant. Now he knows, and it terrifies him.

He feels as though he’s being pulled in two opposite directions: on the one hand, there’s the awful names that Bowers and his gang spit at him whenever he passes them in the hallway, filthy propositions offered by a creature deliberately molded from his worst nightmares. On the other, there’s Richie and the way he makes him feel – not wrong or sick at all, but warm and happy and _safe._ Richie makes him feel strong and cared for all at once, Richie knows he isn’t breakable but still tries to protect him just because, and it’s so different to the smothering, stifling brand of love that Eddie was brought up on that he can’t help craving more of it.

“You okay?” Richie asks, nodding towards the inhaler still clutched tightly in Eddie’s left hand.

“Yeah, fine,” Eddie mutters, shoving the offending lump of plastic away like he’s not sure how it got there. “It’s okay if I crash here tonight, right?”

Richie raises his eyebrows in surprise; he sits down next to Eddie on the narrow bed, and Eddie is hyper-aware of his proximity in a way that he’s never been before. “You gonna tell me what’s going on, Eds? Not that I’m not thrilled to have you all to myself for the night, but won’t your mom be pissed?”

“I don’t give a _fuck_ ,” Eddie seethes, surprising even himself with the harshness of his words. “You know she’s been lying to me this whole time? I’m not sick, I never was. She’s just been giving me all this bullshit medication to – I don’t know, to control me? To stop me from having a life outside of her? All that normal kid stuff I missed out on, because she told me it was too dangerous and I was too weak, and it was all just a pack of lies.”

“You know, it pains me to say this seeing as how I’m giving it to her on the regular and all, but your mom is a real piece of work,” Richie says. His tone is mild enough, but there’s a sort of quiet fury to it that Eddie has never heard from him before. “I’m definitely gonna have to break up with her.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Eddie says tiredly, although something about Richie making light of the situation actually does make him feel a little better. Maybe it’s just the familiarity of their back-and-forth, or maybe it’s the hope that he can’t be too irreparably damaged if Richie is still treating him exactly the same as he always has.

“Sorry,” Richie says. Then, with one of his signature conversational one-eighties that never fail to make Eddie’s head spin, “Hey, can I sign your cast?”

Eddie looks at him dubiously. The cast is still bare, save for Greta Keene’s insult and Eddie’s own piss-poor attempt at covering it up, and he supposes it _would_ be nice to have some messages from his friends, but… “Not if you’re going to write something gross about my mom or – or draw a picture of your dick or something.”

“I would _never.”_ Richie widens his eyes behind his glasses in what is probably supposed to be an attempt at appearing innocent. It makes him look a little bit like an owl. “C’mon, Eds, don’t you trust me?”

And that’s the thing: Eddie _does_ trust him. Against his better judgment, maybe, but he trusts Richie more than anybody else in the world, except for maybe Bill. On a day-to-day basis, Richie is crass and vulgar and an all-around pain in Eddie’s ass, but when it comes to the really important stuff, there's nobody that Eddie would rather have on his side. It’s something that Richie had proven time and time again over the terrifying events of the summer: that underneath all his joking around there's a fiercely loyal, caring soul who would willingly go to hell and back for his friends.

“Fine,” Eddie grumbles, proffering his broken arm before he can change his mind. “But I swear to God if you write anything inappropriate, they’ll never find the body.”

It’s maybe too soon to be making jokes like that, and Eddie cringes as he remembers Richie’s reaction to the missing poster with his face on it – but Richie just laughs, rooting through his desk drawer for a Sharpie and getting to work on Eddie’s cast.

“Ta-da!” He announces when he’s finished, re-capping the pen with a flourish, and Eddie bends closer to inspect what he’s written: _RICHIE TOZIER WAS HERE,_ scrawled in messy block capitals and underlined with a single kiss. It’s far from the worst thing Richie could have written, and for some reason Eddie finds himself almost disappointed that he hadn’t come up with something more creative.

“That’s it?”

“What did you want, a poem?” Richie rolls his eyes. “I had to sign my handiwork, after I snapped that motherfucker back into place.”

“Yeah, after I _specifically told you not to_ ,” Eddie reminds him. Breaking his arm in the first place had been bad enough, but he hadn’t really felt the pain of it then; he was too preoccupied with the fucking clown drooling all over him. Richie resetting the bone, however, had been excruciating, the kind of pain that made him want to throw up and pass out all at once. He can still feel it now, if he thinks about it hard enough, a lingering phantom ache that sets his teeth on edge.

“Sorry,” Richie says, his face falling. He’d said it then, too, couldn’t stop apologizing as Eddie screamed and swore through the pain: _sorry, Eds, fuck, I’m so sorry._ If Eddie had been able to form coherent speech without turning into a blubbering wreck, he would have told Richie that it wasn’t his fault, that he was doing the right thing; that Richie’s hands on his face, his insistence that Eddie look only at him, was a point of comfort amidst all the terror and confusion.

“The doctors said you did a good job,” he offers grudgingly now, and it’s worth it for the way Richie’s face lights up like a fucking Christmas tree.

“Yeah? I always thought I’d missed my calling. I’ve been wasting all this time focusing on my comedy when I could have had a promising medical career instead. Dr. Tozier has a ring to it, don’t you think?”

“A ring of medical malpractice, sure,” Eddie says. He doesn’t mean it, not really – he’s sure that Richie could be a good doctor if he wanted, he’s certainly smart enough – it’s just the way they are with each other, the way they’ve always been. Richie goes out of his way to wind Eddie up, and Eddie is playfully biting in response. Stan told him once that the only reason Richie picked on him so singularly was because he knew Eddie could take it, and he likewise suspects that Richie rather enjoys when Eddie gives it right back to him.

“Or maybe I should try out for baseball instead,” Richie goes on, undeterred. “I mean, did you see the way I whacked that stupid clown? That woulda been a home run for sure.”

“It _was_ kinda cool,” Eddie admits. “Not just taking a swing at It, but what you did for Bill.”

Richie rubs at the back of his neck, almost bashful. It’s something Eddie has noticed before: he has no problem singing his own praises, but when it comes to receiving a compliment from somebody else, he has no idea how to react. “It was nothing any one of you wouldn’t have done.”

He’s right, Eddie knows he is. Just as they’d all gone charging into the sewers to rescue Bev without a moment’s hesitation, he knows there’s no way any one of them would have seriously considered letting the monster have Bill for even a second. Either they all got out, or none of them did. He knows all that, and yet… Eddie’s only just started getting over his hero-worship of Bill, he really doesn’t need to go through it all again with Richie, but something about Richie in that moment, wielding a moldy bat and giving the clown a piece of his mind, had made him seem indestructible.

“That speech you gave was like something out of a movie, though,” he says, because he can’t very well say all of _that._ “I can’t believe you made that up on the spot.”

“Yeah, well. You were pretty badass yourself, Eds. You didn’t even have a weapon, you just kicked the crap out of that fucker. I’ve gotta tell you, for such a tiny little guy, you’ve got an awful lot of pent-up rage.”

“Keep calling me Eds, and I'll unleash some of that rage in your direction,” Eddie promises, but he can't help smiling anyway. Because, yeah, Richie is right about one thing: for a couple of losers, they didn’t do half bad.


	2. 2: 1992

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings in this part for underage drinking and one use of a homophobic slur.

_ii. 1992_

Eddie is sixteen when he ends up at his first ever certified All-American Wild Teen Party. Eddie is sixteen, and he’s pretty sure he’s the only one of his male friends who isn’t currently preoccupied with chasing after girls. The problem isn’t that he’s a _late bloomer,_ despite what his mother proudly insists to anyone who will listen, but rather that his interests lie elsewhere. Apparently Henry Bowers and his ilk were right about him all along, because it’s become clearer than ever over the last couple of years that Eddie likes boys in general, and one boy in particular.

It would be so much easier, he thinks, if he could have fallen for Beverly – sweet, beautiful, tough-as-nails Beverly, who half his friends are at least a little bit in love with; who his mother hates for a variety of ill-founded reasons but who is at least the right gender, and thus represents a much safer form of rebellion. But no, it had to be Richie, with his dumb glasses and horrible jokes and overall _maleness_ , that Eddie can’t seem to stop thinking about kissing as of late. Go figure.

Eddie isn’t stupid, and he’s suffered through enough lectures from his mother about the AIDS crisis to know exactly how popular people like him tend to be in places like Derry. The upshot of it is that he shouldn’t be having the thoughts he’s been having at all, but if he can’t stop them, he’d sure as shit better make sure he doesn’t act on them.

His own sexual identity crisis notwithstanding, his friends’ recent obsession with getting laid is the reason he’s currently standing out like a sore thumb in a foyer filled with people he sees at school every day but who generally act as though he doesn’t exist. Mike scored an invite on account of having a “thing” with some friend of the girl whose party it is, and he’d begged the other Losers to come with him for moral support – because despite the fact that Mike had filled out _incredibly_ well over the previous summer and actually landed himself a place on the football team, he was still the homeschool guy until a few months ago, not to mention one of only a handful of black kids in their ass-backwards, conservative hellhole of a town.

It’s something Eddie has to remind himself of as he scans the assorted partygoers for any sign of his friends: _we’re doing this for Mike._ He eventually finds Richie in the kitchen, surrounded by a knot of kids who actually seem to be entertained by whatever story he’s currently in the middle of, and he ignores the pathetic flip-flop his heart does at the sight of that familiar, unruly head of hair.

“Eds!” Richie exclaims, flinging his arms wide and inadvertently dousing some unsuspecting bystander with whatever was in his cup. “What the hell kept you? Was starting to think you’d bailed.”

“Sorry,” Eddie mutters, acutely aware of the room’s collective attention shifting over to him. “My mom was giving me the third degree.”

“Yeah, I think she gave that to me last night,” Richie says with an obnoxious wink, and Eddie feels his face heat up as somebody snickers in the background. He barely has time to get out the customary _beep beep_ before Richie is slinging an arm around his neck and planting a sloppy, uncoordinated kiss on his cheek.

“Never mind, you’re here now,” he slurs, and Eddie can only stare at him in disbelief. Richie being over the top with physical affection is nothing new, but he’s normally smart enough to rein it in around people who might get the wrong idea and give them shit for it. He’s leaning heavily into Eddie’s side like he might collapse without the extra support; there’s color high in his cheeks and his eyes are suspiciously unfocused behind his glasses and –

“Are you _drunk?_ ” Eddie demands. Without waiting for an answer, he snatches the cup from Richie’s hand and sniffs the remaining liquid swilling around the bottom of it. “Jesus _fuck,_ Richie, what the hell is in this?”

“S’just punch,” Richie shrugs. “You should try some, Eds; might get you to loosen up a little _if_ you know what I mean.”

“Get a room, fags!” Somebody yells; a ripple of laughter passes through the crowd, and Eddie realizes with a rush of anger that they’ve been laughing _at_ Richie the whole time. Hell, they’re probably the ones that have been plying him with alcohol all along for their own sick entertainment; get the nerd wasted and wait for him to do something humiliating, what a great party game.

“Something funny, fuckwads?” he snaps, any instinct for self-preservation going out the window. He’s always had a bit of a short fuse but he’s not the type to go looking for trouble if he can help it, and he takes advantage of the momentary shock at his outburst to drag Richie away before things can turn even uglier.

“You’re cute when you’re mad,” Richie mumbles, tripping a little over his own feet as he stumbles along in Eddie’s wake.

“Shut the fuck up, Richie,” Eddie says by way of a reply, willing himself not to blush at the compliment.

They run into Stan and Mike and Mike’s not-girlfriend outside, at which point Richie decides to announce their presence by throwing up all over the grass, narrowly avoiding Eddie’s shoes.

“Jesus Christ,” Stan mutters, looking faintly green himself. “How much has he had?”

“I don’t know, I just found him like this,” Eddie admits. “I should probably get him home. Sorry, Mike.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mike says easily, looking equal parts concerned and amused. “Your boy’s not looking too hot.”

_Your boy._ Eddie feels himself flush even deeper at that, the implication of ownership and the casual way with which Mike says it. He knows Mike doesn’t mean anything by it, which somehow makes it worse; it’s just a truth universally acknowledged, Richie is Eddie’s responsibility and vice versa.

“Here.” Stan digs his car keys out of his pocket and tosses them at Eddie, who almost drops them in his surprise. “Take my car, it’ll be easier.”

“You sure?” Eddie passed his test two months ago, and he knows he’s a good driver, but Stan is near-fanatical about his car. He barely lets Richie ride in it even when he’s _sober,_ so it’s testament to how worried he must be that he’s willing to let him anywhere near it in his current state.

“I’d drive him myself, but I’ve had a couple of drinks already. Just don’t let him puke on my seats, or he can pay to get the upholstery replaced.”

They manage to make it to the Tozier residence without any further incidents, and Eddie thanks whoever might be listening that Richie’s parents are out as they crash through the front door with slightly less grace than a herd of wildebeest. Not that they’d likely notice him half-carrying their intoxicated son up the stairs even if they were around, but Eddie can’t think about that right now or he’ll get _really_ mad.

“Sorry for ruining everyone’s night,” Richie says as Eddie ushers him into bed, and Eddie couldn’t stay angry even if he wanted to. He can’t help going weak for Richie when he’s all sad and vulnerable like this. _Pathetic._

“You didn’t ruin it, Rich, don’t worry,” Eddie assures him. “Trust me, Mike looked like he was having a pretty great time without us.”

“Yeah, his girlfriend’s pretty cute,” Richie snickers. “Not as cute as you, though, Eds.”

“Yeah, okay.” Eddie rolls his eyes and makes a show of smoothing down the blankets, fighting back a smile in spite of himself. It doesn’t mean anything, he knows; Richie calls him stupid pet names all the time, even when he’s _not_ drunk. He probably just thinks Eddie is cute in the same way a puppy or a kitten is cute, because he’s small and scrappy and seems to inspire some kind of strange, mothering instinct in people. It’s not remotely the same as when the rest of his friends talk about the cute girls in their classes.

“I mean it,” Richie insists. “You are cute. And smart and funny and _brave –”_

“You’re _definitely_ drunk.” He can only assume that Richie has him confused with one of the others, Bill or Mike or somebody, because Eddie is none of those things. He does okay with schoolwork, but he doesn’t have Stan’s dedication or Mike’s love of studying, to say nothing of Richie’s natural smarts. The only times he ever manages to be funny are when he’s actively trying _not_ to be, and as for brave – it would probably take less time to list the things that _don’t_ scare him than the things that do.

( _All that tasty, tasty, beautiful fear,_ a half-remembered voice whispers in the back of his mind, and Eddie suppresses a shudder.)

“M’not that drunk,” Richie says, with a small, sad smile that Eddie can’t quite figure out. “Hey, c’mere, I wanna show you something.”

Against his better instincts, Eddie leans in closer, and before he has time to fully process what’s happening, Richie is sitting up to meet him halfway, their lips meeting in something too clumsy and awkward to properly be called a kiss. It only lasts a second, maybe two, but Eddie is frozen in place, staring at Richie dumbly until his brain catches up to him and he remembers to be horrified.

“What the fuck, Richie? You did _not_ just kiss me after puking your guts up all over the place, that’s so freaking disgusting.”

“Sorry,” Richie says, lying back down with an expression on his face that couldn’t be further from sorry if it tried. “I had to, you just look so adorable sitting on my bed like that.”

Eddie huffs and storms off to the bathroom to brush his teeth, not bothering to think about why he keeps a spare toothbrush at Richie’s in the first place. The worst part, he thinks as he glares at his reflection over the sink, is that he’s not even as grossed out as he really should be. Apparently that’s just what Richie does to him now, turns him into some disgusting freak who doesn’t care about things like basic hygiene or social niceties.

“You’re staying?” Richie asks when he returns to the bedroom, freshly washed and ready for sleep. “You should go back to the party, have some fun.”

“Are you kidding me? I fucking hate parties,” Eddie reminds him. “Besides, somebody needs to keep watch, make sure you don’t choke on your own vomit and die in your sleep.” He says it flippantly, but he knows he won’t be able to relax tonight unless he’s somewhere he can keep an eye on Richie, just in case.

“My hero.” Richie scoots over to the far edge of the bed and Eddie climbs in on the other side, spooning up close behind him to prevent him from rolling onto his back in the night. He has a sudden, maddening urge to say something stupid, like _I worry about you so much sometimes it’s crazy_ or _you’re the cute one_ or even _you’re ridiculous and disgusting and I think I might be in love with you._ Instead, he bites his tongue and concentrates on listening to Richie’s breathing gradually even out as he drifts into the untroubled sleep of the extremely drunk.

Neither of them mentions the kiss in the morning, and Eddie assumes that Richie has forgotten all about it. It’s probably for the best; he’s not sure he could stand the heartbreak of having to listen to Richie explain that it was just a stupid drunken mistake and solemnly apologize for leading him on. As long as they never address it directly, at least, Eddie can hold on to the possibility that it meant something real.


	3. 3: 1994

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Further warnings for underage drinking and homophobic slurs in this part.

_iii. 1994_

Eddie is eighteen, and his world is collapsing in on itself, slowly but surely.

Which, okay, is maybe a little dramatic, but that’s how it feels. There are only four of them left in Derry now, Eddie and Richie and Bill and Mike. Ben moved away with his parents before the start of junior year, and Stan left right after graduation to go travelling before college. Now it’s the end of the summer, and Mike is the only who plans on staying, taking on more responsibility at the farm as his grandfather gets older. Eddie feels guilty about that, sometimes, and he knows the others do too, but Mike handles it with the same grace he brings to everything. He’s taken to snapping pictures of them all at every opportunity with the Polaroid camera he got for his birthday last year, compiling the resulting photographs into some kind of scrapbooking project to remember them by when they leave.

As for the rest of them – Eddie is enrolled at the University of Maine, close enough to home to appease his mother and far enough away for him to get out from under her thumb. Bill leaves for UPenn in a few weeks’ time, and Richie – Richie is headed for UCLA. Tomorrow, in point of fact, which is why the four of them are currently gathered at Bill’s for one last hurrah.

Or that was the plan, at any rate, but the mood has been somber all evening, and Eddie isn’t sure whether it’s their uncertainty about what the future holds or just that they don’t function as a group the way they used to, now that they’re down three of their members. Bill and Mike fucked off some time ago to look at something in Bill’s room, and now it’s just Eddie and Richie left in the living room, ignoring the TV in stilted silence. Eddie is starting to suspect they orchestrated the whole thing deliberately in order to give him and Richie some time alone, which is fucking bullshit because Richie is leaving all of them. It’s not like they know about the pathetic crush Eddie’s been harboring for the last five years.

“They think they’re so smooth,” Richie says, like he’s reading Eddie’s mind. It doesn’t quite break the tension, but it has Eddie smothering a laugh against the back of his hand anyways. He’s half drunk on some disgusting wine coolers he found at the back of Bill’s fridge, which probably goes some way towards explaining his maudlin state of mind, but Richie has a way of breaking through the haze and touching something real inside of him.

Part of Eddie wishes he wouldn’t. It’s only going to make saying goodbye that much harder.

“What do they think I’m gonna do, throw myself at your feet and beg you not to go?” Eddie asks. It’s a joke, but one that hits a little too close to the truth, and he never would have said it if he was a hundred percent sober. Thankfully, Richie must be fairly buzzed himself – either that, or he just doesn’t notice anything amiss – because he snorts a laugh and tips the neck of his bottle towards Eddie in acknowledgement of his point.

“Yeah, and I’m gonna manfully swallow my tears and apologize for ever thinking I could leave somebody as cute as you,” he says, and Eddie laughs so he doesn’t cry, finishing off his drink in one long swallow. Rolling his head on the sofa cushion, he turns to study Richie’s profile; from this angle, he looks alien and strange, the flickering light from the TV casting weird shadows over his features. The reflection of the screen in his glasses prevents Eddie from getting a good look at his eyes, which are normally like windows into whatever happens to be going through Richie’s head at any given time. It frustrates him, and without really thinking about it he reaches out and takes Richie’s glasses off for him, sliding them slowly down his nose and hooking them in the collar of his shirt.

Now that he can actually see Richie’s expression, he realizes it’s mostly one of confusion; Richie has gone very still, and he’s watching Eddie with a sort of nervous interest, as though curious to see what he’ll do next. Eddie can’t help wondering the same thing, because he definitely doesn’t seem to quite be in full control of his body as he closes the gap between them, leaning in to press a soft kiss against Richie’s mouth.

It’s a brief thing, over in a matter of seconds, but that’s long enough for Eddie to be struck full-force with the realization of just how much he _wants._ He thinks back to two years ago, Richie trying to kiss him while drunk out of his mind after some stupid house party, and wonders whether either of them will ever have to guts to do this sober.

When he pulls back, Richie is staring at him as though he’s never seen him before. “What was that for?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie shrugs. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while. Thought I might not get another chance.”

Richie licks his lips nervously. “You, uh. You want to do it again?”

“God, yes,” Eddie says, against all his better judgment, and then Richie’s hands are on his face and he’s kissing him like his life depends on it. Richie kisses with the same enthusiasm he applies to just about everything else, and it’s like he can’t get close enough, like he wants to swallow Eddie whole. Eddie thinks he wouldn’t mind so much if he did. It should be fucking ridiculous, making out on the Denbroughs’ couch with some crappy horror movie playing in the background and Bill and Mike rattling around upstairs, but then everything about them has always been a _little_ bit ridiculous, and Eddie can’t get enough. He can hear the leper’s seedy promises somewhere in the back of his mind, his mother’s simpering disapproval of “the gay disease”, Henry Bowers tripping him up and calling him _queerboy cocksucker fag_ – but those things seem unimportant now and he pushes them away, focusing only on Richie.

Richie, whose tongue is currently sliding along his bottom lip in a way that Eddie really should find disgusting, because _what has he eaten today do you know how unhygienic that is what if he has mono,_ but instead it just lights him up inside until he feels as though he’s about to combust. And then he parts his lips and Richie’s tongue is _in_ his mouth, and Eddie makes a noise that’s almost embarrassing, fisting his hands in the back of Richie’s shirt. Richie tugs Eddie’s lip gently between his teeth as he pulls away, and Eddie can’t help whining a little at that, too.

“You _like_ that,” Richie says, infuriatingly smug.

“Shut up,” Eddie mumbles, but doesn’t bother to deny it. It’s actually fucking unfair, how good Richie is at this, and Eddie tries hard not to think about how many other people he must have kissed in order to get that way. The collar of Richie’s shirt has fallen open a little in the midst of all their fumbling, exposing the hollow of his throat, and Eddie can’t stop staring at that little triangle of skin, an idea forming in his mind. Feeling like he’s in a trance, he leans forward to seal his lips against the notch of Richie’s collarbone and _sucks._

“Holy shit, Eds,” Richie gasps, hands flying up to bury themselves in Eddie’s hair, and it’s Eddie’s turn to feel a little smug. He only has theoretical knowledge of how to leave a hickey, but he figures it can’t be fucking difficult. He must be doing something right at any rate, if the noises Richie is making are anything to go by.

“There,” he says when he’s finished, looking down at the red mark blooming on Richie’s skin with an odd sense of pride. “Now you have something to remember me by.”

“As if I could ever forget that pretty face,” Richie says. It’s the sort of comment he’d usually follow up by pinching Eddie’s cheek or nudging his side, but this time he cups Eddie’s face and strokes a thumb under his eye, maddeningly gentle.

Eddie wants to say, _don’t make promises you can’t keep._ He wants to say, _when was the last time any of us heard from Bev? How about Stan, or Ben? People leave this town and they forget._ Instead, he closes his eyes and leans his face into Richie’s touch, and doesn’t say anything at all.

Bill and Mike come back in not long after that – cautiously, like they’re afraid of what they might find – and they turn their attention back to the movie like they’ve got any idea what it’s about. Even then, Eddie doesn’t stray far from Richie’s side; they remain more or less tangled up together on the sofa, his head on Richie’s shoulder and Richie’s arm around his waist. Bill raises his eyebrows at the bruise on Richie’s neck but doesn’t comment on it, and it’s all so, _so_ obvious but Eddie can’t bring himself to care.

He must fall asleep at some point, because the next thing he knows it’s morning and he’s alone. He has a brief moment of panic that he somehow slept through Richie’s departure, despite the fact he knows Richie would never leave without saying goodbye to him even if they hadn’t kissed last night. Then he hears the indistinct murmur of voices coming from another room, and mentally scolds himself for immediately jumping to the worst possible conclusion.

“…mind if I take this one, Mikey?” Richie is saying as Eddie makes his way into the kitchen, catching the tail end of their conversation.

“Sure, I guess.”

“Take what?” Eddie asks, and Richie startles as though he’s been caught in some illicit act, hastily shoving something into his pocket before Eddie can see what it is.

“Nothing!” He says, way too loud to be believable. “I was just asking Michael here to hand over the last bagel, right, Mike?” Mike glares daggers but grudgingly gives Richie his breakfast, and Eddie is _definitely_ missing something but for once in his life, he can’t be bothered to push it. If Richie wants to act like an evasive asshole, that’s his problem; Eddie isn’t going to let it spoil their last moments together.

After they’ve all eaten breakfast, Richie’s mom arrives to drive him to the airport, car loaded with everything he’s taking to California with him ( _“Like showing an interest now is really gonna make up for the last eighteen years of ignoring me,”_ Richie had complained), and they all file outside to say their goodbyes. Eddie watches Richie hug Bill and then Mike, and then it’s his turn and he feels like he’s about the throw up because he can’t fucking do this.

“I’m gonna miss you most, Spaghetti Head,” Richie says, with a smile that’s both fond and a little bit sad. “Well, maybe except for your mom,” he adds after a beat, and then Eddie is shoving ineffectually at his chest as Richie gathers him into his arms, folding his body around Eddie’s like some huge gangly spider. He’s warm and solid and _here,_ for a few more moments at least, and Eddie stops pretending to struggle and allows himself to melt into the embrace.

They hug for a long time, much longer than Richie had hugged either Bill or Mike, and when they finally separate Richie takes Eddie’s face in his hands, just like he had the night before, and Eddie’s heart starts going a mile a minute because _surely_ he isn’t about to – but then Richie is leaning in and, yes, kissing him again, right in front of their friends with his mother waiting in the car only a few feet away. It’s sweet and chaste, nothing like their heated makeout session on the couch, and when Richie pulls back he looks at Eddie for a moment like he wants to say something else – or maybe like he’s waiting for _Eddie_ to say something.

Then Richie’s mom leans on the car horn and they leap away from each other, the moment lost.

“Well, it’s been real,” Richie says awkwardly, fidgeting with the straps of his backpack. “Try not to miss me too much, losers. I’ll call you all when I get there.” He casts one last glance in Eddie’s direction before he’s walking over to the car and fitting himself awkwardly inside. Eddie watches him peel away from Bill’s house, waving enthusiastically at them all from behind the window, and stays rooted in place long after the car has vanished from sight, ignoring the chilly September air and hating himself for all the things he never had the courage to say.


	4. 4: 2003

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this part for discussion of bereavement, sexual situations between adult characters, recreational drug use (marijuana) and generally unhealthy coping mechanisms.

_iv. 2003_

Eddie is twenty-seven, and he’s getting blazed outside his mother’s funeral, one final act of defiance after they put her in the ground.

According to the doctors, it was a massive stroke that finally nailed her; she died alone after alienating her only son, and the funeral is a lonely affair, populated mostly by aunts and cousins Eddie only half-remembers. Richie is the one who’d brought the pot, naturally, and he’s a solid presence at Eddie’s side now, despite the fact that it’s been nearly a decade since they last saw each other, yearly Christmas cards and the occasional impersonal email their only form of correspondence. His hair is as wild as ever and he’s grown a frankly ridiculous goatee but somehow he still manages to look unfairly good, dressed in an expensive-looking suit and sporting a healthy California tan, the goofy glasses he’d worn throughout his adolescence traded in for contacts. Eddie feels distinctly unimpressive by comparison, and more than a little guilty about dragging him back to Maine after all this time – but he hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of coming alone and so he’d found himself calling up his childhood crush out of desperation, like any sane person would do.

The only saving grace is that the funeral is being held not in Derry but Portland, where Sonia Kaspbrak had finally popped her clogs in an assisted living home, but it’s still close enough for the monsters lurking in the back of his mind to stir for the first time in years.

“Thanks for coming,” he says now, trying to be discreet as he passes the joint back to Richie. They’re unlikely to be caught, hiding in a secluded corner of the cemetery like a couple of teenagers, but Eddie can practically _feel_ his mother’s disapproving glare even from beyond the grave.

“Are you kidding me?” Richie says, exhaling a cloud of pungent smoke. “Mrs. K was my main squeeze back in the day, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” Then he winces, as if struck by a rare moment of self-awareness. “Sorry, too soon.”

It probably is, but Eddie finds himself laughing a little hysterically anyway. In all honesty, he appreciates the fact that Richie isn’t treating him like he’s made of glass, unlike the assembled relatives who would pinch his cheeks during family holidays and turn a blind eye to his mother’s abuse.

“You want to get out of here?” he asks, and only realizes how much it sounds like a come-on when Richie gives him a flat look in response.

Richie sets about rolling them another joint when they get back to his hotel room, and Eddie feels a surge of want deep in his belly as he watches him work, his fingers nimble and practiced on the paper. He’s halfway stoned already, which is probably why his hand ends up wandering without his permission, landing on Richie’s knee and sliding slowly but purposefully along his inseam.

Richie stops what he’s doing and goes perfectly still, staring with laser-like focus at Eddie’s hand on his thigh. “Um. What are you doing?”

In truth, Eddie has no fucking idea. He’s fooled around with guys a couple of times before, whenever he could work up the nerve to check out Manhattan’s gay scene, but it’s always left him brimming with self-loathing and regret. This, though – this is Richie, who represents all his what-ifs and might-have-beens, and Eddie feels a little giddy at having him here again, in such close proximity after all this time. He’s not likely to get another opportunity like this any time soon, so he might as well grab it with both hands. So to speak.

“Do you remember that last night at Bill’s house, before you left Derry?” Eddie has only just remembered it himself, truth be told, and he isn’t sure whether it’s the proximity to his hometown that’s suddenly got him remembering scenes from his adolescence that three different therapists haven’t been able to unlock, or if it’s just Richie.

“The night you kissed me, you mean?” Richie says dryly. “I think I might recall, yeah.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows and waits for the penny to drop. He sees the exact moment Richie _gets it,_ his eyes widening to comic proportions even without the aid of his glasses, mouth falling open in a soft _o._

“Oh.”

“Wanna try it again?” Eddie says, and then he does just that, pressing his lips to Richie’s and effectively silencing whatever comeback he might have had. Richie responds right away, groaning something that could be Eddie’s name or just some nonsense syllable, one broad hand settling at the small of Eddie’s back and bringing them closer together. He tastes predictably of weed, and Eddie feels real and solid under his touch; the most substantial he’s felt in days, ever since he got the phone call, _we’re very sorry to inform you that your mother has passed._ He’s hungry for it suddenly, needs as much as he can get, and he pushes at Richie’s chest until he falls back against the queen-sized mattress, swings a leg over his hips and follows him down, sucking bruises into his neck.

“Whoa, hey there.” Something in Richie’s voice gives Eddie pause, and he glances down to see Richie gazing back at him with a soft, almost wistful expression that makes him feel naked despite the fact he hasn’t even gotten his goddamn suit jacket off.

“Holy fuck, you’re beautiful,” Richie says, sounding more than a little out of it himself, and Eddie feels himself go red. He doesn’t know what to do with that; it’s not something he’s ever heard before. He’s been called cute more times than he can count, even hot once or twice, but never _beautiful._ At a loss for what else to do, he kisses Richie again, more forcefully this time, biting at the swell of his lip and palming the growing bulge at his crotch.

“Wait, Eddie, slow down.” Richie pulls away, breathing heavily. His hair is ruined and his mouth is red and swollen, and Eddie doesn’t want to slow down for a second, because if he slows down he’ll have to think, and if he starts to think he might just fall apart. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea.”

“Why, because the gossip rags might find out and tank your career?” Eddie says snidely. It’s a low blow and he knows it, regrets it almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Richie has made a bit of a name for himself in recent years, but he’s hardly well-known enough for the tabloids to care what he gets up to in his personal life – and even if he was, he’s never been the type to give a flying fuck what anybody else thinks.

“No, because you’re not exactly the picture of emotional stability right now,” he says, straightening his shirt like a dismissal. “God, I’d forgotten about that.”

“What?”

“What a tremendous bitch you can be.” He’s grinning as he says it, but for some reason it puts Eddie over the edge, and to his horror he finds his eyes are filling with tears as the stress of the day catches up to him.

“Oh, Eds, c’mere,” Richie sighs, tugging him up from his kneeling position and gathering him close. Eddie goes willingly, not even bothering to protest the nickname. It’s familiar, comforting, like pretty much everything about Richie right now. Eddie feels faintly ridiculous, sobbing into his chest like a child after practically throwing himself at him, but he’s also realizing just how much he’s missed this, missed Richie. He’s still half-hard where Richie’s thigh is pressed between his legs, but the urgent edge to his arousal is gone now, and the sensation of Richie’s hand rubbing circles against his back is more soothing than stimulating.

“I didn’t mean it,” Richie says. “You’re not a bitch. I mean, that _was_ pretty bitchy, but I think I can forgive you, given the circumstances.”

It’s a pretty transparent attempt at lightening the mood, but Eddie snorts a tired laugh anyway. He feels a little foggy, and isn’t entirely sure whether it’s due to the crying or the drugs or both.

“God, I’m sorry. I’m a fucking mess,” he says once he’s cried himself out, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “I never should have asked you to come out here.”

“I already told you, Eddie, it’s fine. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be.”

“I hate her so much for doing this to me,” Eddie admits quietly, hiding his face against Richie’s neck. He figures he doesn’t need to elaborate on who the ‘ _her’_ is referring to. “I mean, I should be happy that she’s dead, right? I should be throwing a fucking party. She ruined my life.”

“She was still your mom,” Richie says easily, like that explains everything. Maybe it does. “And I don’t know about ‘ruined your life’, aren’t you some big-shot city boy these days?”

Eddie raises an eyebrow at that; he doesn’t know where Richie is getting his intel from, but he’s way, _way_ off base. “I drive a taxi, Rich. I spend my life taking tourists from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, and if I’m _really_ lucky they remember to tip and don’t puke all over my seats.” He doesn’t bother to mention that he’s been messing around with web design on the side, whenever he gets the chance; it’s not like anything is ever going to come of it. “What about you, anyway? Taken Hollywood by storm yet?”

Richie laughs a little at that, rubbing the back of his neck almost self-consciously. It’s a good look on him, Eddie thinks. “I don’t know about that. My agent seems to think this next gig she’s got lined up for me is gonna be my big break, but then she’s said that about everything else I’ve done so far, so I’m not holding my breath.”

They talk for a while longer, trading stories about their lives and careers, the few scraps of information they’ve managed to pick up about the rest of the Losers. Eddie learns that Stan is getting married next month, that Bill’s second book outsold his first, that Beverly is already making a name for herself in the fashion world, and suddenly he feels the distance between them all like a physical ache, even though he’s scarcely thought of them in years.

At some point they slide fully down the bed, so that Eddie is lying with his head on Richie’s chest, Richie’s fingers carding slowly through his hair, and it’s the most content he’s felt in a long time. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say something, like _I missed you so much and I didn’t even realize it till now_ or _I don’t think I ever really got over you_ or _let’s run away together,_ but he falls asleep before he can summon up the courage.

They share a cab to the airport in the morning, to catch their separate flights headed to opposite ends of the country. Richie kisses his cheek when they get to the gate, and Eddie almost asks him not to get on the plane, but he forces himself to stay quiet. It wouldn’t be fair; Richie has already gone above and beyond just by coming out here for the funeral, and he has his own life now. They both do.

“Take care of yourself, Spaghetti,” Richie says with a strange, sad smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Maybe don’t wait nine years to call, next time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize it kind of flies in the face of book canon to have them meet up before facing It again, but I do what I want.


	5. 5+1: 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this last part a day early for the holidays! Content warning for violence and gore, though if you've read the book/seen the film you should be fine.

_v. 2016_

Eddie doesn’t wait nine years; he waits thirteen.

Eddie is forty the next time he sees Richie, and it isn’t even through any design of his own. Mike is the one who called them all back to the town Eddie’s spent his entire adult life trying to run away from, and he thinks that if left to his own devices he probably would have gone the rest of that life without ever laying eyes on any of the other Losers again.

Still, Richie doesn’t seem to hold it against him, if the way he launches himself at Eddie and practically lifts him off his feet with a full-body hug as soon as he sees him is any indication. Eddie is used to rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous these days; it doesn’t faze him anymore, mostly because they’re near-universally pieces of shit, but he can’t help being a little bit star-struck by Richie – which is ridiculous, really, because Eddie has known Richie since way back when he was just some obnoxious loudmouth with oversized glasses and buckteeth. Either way, Richie has definitely made it big since they saw each other last, and Eddie hasn’t spoken to him in over a decade, could barely remember knowing him before setting foot back in Derry, but he’s still seen him on Conan and Jimmy Kimmel and just about every other talk show under the sun in the interim.

“Still just as cute as the day I met you, Eds,” Richie says, and if not for the unmistakable fondness in his tone Eddie would be sure he's being made fun of, because he’s forty now and still physically unimposing, the smallest person in the room aside from Beverly; all the better to be cowed into submission by his wife. He’s forty and he has more money in the bank than it would be polite to admit to, but he’s married to a carbon copy of his mother and he’s so filled with disgust at himself that he can’t even get it up to have sex with her without the aid of chemical stimulants. He’s been told that he still looks young for his age but he feels old before his time, and he can’t understand how Richie isn’t repulsed by him, how he can’t sense the rottenness seeping from his every pore just by looking at him.

And then – somehow – none of that seems to matter, because he remembers that there are worse things here than his own shortcomings. Mike fills them all in on the latest spate of killings; his voice falters a little when he talks about the first victim, and Eddie tries not to notice the way five pairs of eyes cut to him at the story of poor Adrian Mellon, a fragile young man who died outside Derry’s only gay bar with an inhaler in his pocket. From there, the hits just keep on coming: Stan is dead, and Mike is in critical condition, and Eddie is technically a murderer – never mind that he was acting in self-defense, that if anybody had it coming Henry Bowers did. He has blood on his hands now, both figuratively and literally.

Then it’s the sewers again, stumbling around blindly in the dark, and then Eddie is watching his own blood disperse through the filthy water after the monster takes his arm, thinking _that shit’s gonna get infected_ a split-second before he realizes he’s not going to live long enough for that to be an issue.

Eddie is forty, and he’s bleeding out in a sewer. Eddie is forty, and he’s about to die in the same place that brutally murdered his childhood twenty-seven years ago.

God, he’d known, he’d _known_ it was a bad idea, coming back to Derry. As soon as he’d heard Mike’s voice over the phone and the memories started coming back piece by piece, he’d known it.

Still, he can’t quite bring himself to regret it, even now. There are some things worth dying for, and he’s done more good down here in these tunnels than he ever could have achieved in his comfortable, affluent, eternally unfulfilling life back in New York. Even if nobody will remember him for it.

The others are fussing around him, arguing back and forth in urgent whispers that go over his head. Ben is taking off his belt, and Beverly is pulling it tight around what’s left of Eddie’s arm in a makeshift tourniquet, and then there’s nothing but the pain, excruciating and all-consuming. Eddie is distantly aware that somebody is screaming, and realizes a beat later that it’s him.

“Okay, easy,” somebody else is saying – Richie, that’s Richie’s voice. Richie is cradling Eddie’s head in his lap, and he sounds strange; sort of choked, like he’s been crying. “Bill, we need to get him out of here.”

Bill mumbles something back, indistinct; whatever it is, Richie clearly doesn’t like it much, because he snaps, “I don’t give a _fuck_ about the fucking clown right now!”

“Guys, this isn’t helping,” Beverly says, her own voice thick with tears, and then Eddie tunes them out again, closing his eyes. The pain is receding again now, but so is everything else, and he knows he doesn’t have much time left. As far as experiences go, it turns out dying isn’t so bad, but there’s something he needs to do first, something he’s been meaning to say for a long time.

“Richie.”

“Don’t try to talk, Eds, save your strength,” Richie whispers, looking down at him a little desperately. There’s a smear of blood on his face, and Eddie reaches up with his good hand to wipe it away.

“Don’t call me Eds,” he manages. “You know I… I…”

Even now that he’s _literally_ on his deathbed, the words don’t come easily. There are a million different ways he could finish that sentence, and he’s still trying to decide on the right one when the darkness closes in around him.

\--

_vi. 2016 again_

Eddie is forty, and he isn’t dead after all.

The first thing he becomes aware of as he drags himself back to consciousness is the clean, antiseptic scent of _hospital_ , something with which he became intimately acquainted during his childhood. The second thing he becomes aware of is that none other than Richie Tozier, celebrated television personality and professional shit, is sat at his bedside, dozing lightly in the shitty plastic visitors’ chair. Not only that – Richie is actually _holding his hand._

Eddie must make some small sound of incredulity, because Richie bolts awake almost immediately. He goes faintly red, like he’s embarrassed at having been caught, but he doesn’t actually let go of Eddie’s hand, which is… _interesting,_ to say the least.

“Holy shit, Eds, you’re awake. How, um – how are you feeling?”

Richie winces, like he knows what a painfully stupid question that is. Eddie gets the distinct impression that he’s being handled with kid gloves, as though Richie is scared he’s going to flip out at any given moment. He’d probably be insulted by that if he had some idea of _why;_ as it is, he has only the vaguest recollection of the last few days. He remembers arriving in Derry, the disastrous dinner at the Chinese restaurant, getting the news about Stan, and then…

He goes to rake his free hand through his hair, a nervous tic that helps him think, but his arm must have gone to sleep because it doesn’t respond to the command from his brain. Eddie glances to his right, and that’s when he sees it – or rather, _doesn’t_ see it.

His right arm is almost completely gone; just a few inches of useless flesh hanging below his shoulder, ending in an unwieldy mass of bandages and padding. It all comes rushing back to him with sudden, startling clarity: throwing himself at the clown, which wasn’t a clown at all anymore but something _else_ entirely, something his brain refused to comprehend. The creature’s jaws clamping down on his arm, the searing agony as it tore through flesh and muscle and bone, cleaving his limb from his body as easily as if it was made of plasticine. The pain is as present and immediate as if it was happening right now, and he wonders how he could have missed it when he first woke up.

He’s vaguely aware of Richie repeating his name with increasing urgency, but it’s as though he’s shouting the words from the other end of a tunnel. Eddie can’t stop staring at it, the _absence_ where he should have a perfectly functional arm, and all of a sudden it’s hard to breathe. His chest feels tight and he’s not getting enough oxygen, he needs his inhaler even though he hasn’t had an asthma attack ( _panic attack_ ) since he was in his twenties.

“Eddie, calm down,” Richie is saying from what sounds like very far away, and then the monitors are going crazy and doctors and nurses are pouring into the room talking about things like “vitals” and “sedatives”, and then everything goes black again.

The memories come back quicker the next time he wakes up, and he manages not to have a full-blown panic attack this time around. He feels something more like sad acceptance – _this is the way things are now_ – and he honestly isn’t sure whether that’s a good thing or not.

He’s also alone this time, save for the nurse changing his dressing. She gives him a sympathetic smile when she sees that he’s awake and goes to fetch the doctor, a stern-looking man who bombards Eddie with seemingly endless questions he isn’t particularly in the mood to answer. From what he can piece together, the official story given to the police and the hospital staff is that he was mauled by some kind of wild animal; Eddie doubts any of them believe it, but then again, this is Derry. Even if they don’t buy the party line, they’re unlikely to try and dig any deeper.

After what feels like hours, the doctor finally seems satisfied with all his poking and prodding, and no sooner has he left than Richie comes bursting in, rambling about having left the room to get a coffee and apologizing profusely for not being there when Eddie woke up again. He’s pale and unshaven, and he’s actually wearing his glasses – not the clunky ones that Eddie remembers from their childhood, but a sleek, modern pair that seem to sit awkwardly on his face, like he isn’t used to wearing them.

“Wow, you look like fried shit,” Eddie says, an attempt at levity that falls predictably flat.

“This coming from the guy in the hospital bed,” Richie points out. His voice shakes a little, but Eddie chooses not to comment on it. “How… how much do you remember?”

“Everything, unfortunately,” Eddie admits, before a bitter laugh slips out without his permission. “Well, everything up until the demon clown ate my fucking arm. Things get a little fuzzy after that, to tell the truth.”

He’s been trying to avoid looking at it, the clean white bandage and the negative space beneath his right shoulder _._ If he doesn’t look, he can almost pretend it’s still there.

“Fuck, Eds. I’m so fucking sorry –“

“Don’t,” Eddie cuts in quietly. He knows that Richie means well, but even an ounce of sympathy right now might just be enough to break him. “Did we do it this time? Is it – is it over?”

As far as subject changes go, it’s about as subtle as a kick in the teeth, but Richie goes with it. “As far as any of us can tell – yeah, we got the bastard. Well, technically _we_ didn’t do anything, the B-team went after it while I was busy dragging your ass to the hospital,” – Eddie is briefly confused until he remembers Richie’s childhood nickname for the Bill-Bev-Ben love triangle – “but you know what I mean. Apparently your little trick with the battery acid weakened it enough for them to finish it off, but if you ever try to play the hero like that again, I’m kicking your ass. Just so you know.”

“Your bedside manner is incredible,” Eddie deadpans. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on feeding any other body parts to a sewer monster any time soon.” Richie doesn’t laugh, which is probably fair enough but makes for an interesting reversal of the status quo. “Have you… have you started to forget yet?”

“Nope, it’s all still in here, clear as day.” Richie taps the side of his head. “Same with the others, too. Mike thinks it might be a good sign; that it means the fucker might actually be dead this time.”

“So I get to remember this shit for the rest of my life? Fantastic.” It’s not exactly the reward he would have picked, but he supposes it’s marginally better than forgetting again. It’s not as though they were any less traumatized last time, after all; they just didn’t know _why_. “Wait, Mike – Mike’s okay?” Last Eddie saw, he was in intensive care with about half a dozen stab wounds, and suddenly he’s desperate for just _one_ bit of good news. After Stan, he’s not sure he could take losing anyone else.

“Yeah, he’s doing good. They’re talking about releasing him soon.” Eddie’s confusion must show on his face, because Richie adds gently, “You’ve been out for almost a week, Eddie.”

“Christ.” Eddie closes his eyes to try and process this new information, wondering what else he’s missed. Then he opens them again, casting a critical eye over Richie’s disheveled appearance. “And have you actually slept or showered at all in that time?”

Richie scratches at his jaw sheepishly. “Not by choice, but after the first couple of nights the nurses stopped feeling sorry for me and wouldn’t let me sleep in your room. Anyway, Benverly picked up the slack on the mother hen front while you were doing your best sleeping beauty impression, so you don’t need to worry about me.”

“ _Benverly?_ ”

“Yeah,” Richie grins, inordinately pleased with himself. “They’re like a thing now, I guess? And it’s like they’ve merged into one person, some kind of two-headed monster that just goes around offering their sage advice to anyone who stands still long enough to listen. It’s sort of terrifying, honestly. Adorable, don’t get me wrong, but still. Terrifying.”

Eddie thinks about that, about Ben and Bev finding each other and falling in love again after all this time, and thinks that at least some good came out of this whole clusterfuck. Then he thinks about Richie holding him as he bled out in those filthy tunnels, the phantom brush of lips he swears he felt against his face as he lost consciousness. It had seemed so _important,_ then, that Richie should know how he felt before he died; somehow, unbelievably, that didn’t happen – he’s alive, and upon taking stock he realizes that that feeling, that _urgency,_ hasn’t really lessened.

He supposes that losing an arm and almost bleeding to death in a sewer has a way of changing your perspective on things. He can’t stop thinking about the fact that the first victim this time around was a gay kid with asthma, a kid who could easily have been _him_ , twenty years ago. Adrian Mellon is dead, but Eddie is still here, and for some reason he can’t shake the feeling that he owes it to this dead boy he never met to be honest – with himself, with Richie, with the whole goddamn world – for maybe the first time in his life.

“There was something I wanted to tell you,” he starts, before he can talk himself out of it. “Back there in the sewers, before I passed out.”

“I know, I know, you hate when I call you Eds. I gotta tell you, as far as last words go –“

“No, that’s not –” Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose, huffing out a frustrated breath of air. “Richie, can you please just… stop talking and _listen_ to what I’m telling you?”

Now Richie is staring at him like he thinks Eddie has lost his mind as well as his arm, but he nods warily. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“I don’t love my wife,” Eddie says, because it seems as good a place to start as any. “I never loved her, not the way I’m supposed to.  I think I just married her because she reminded me of my mother, because letting her take control of my life was easier than having to deal with the truth.”

“And what’s the truth?” Richie prompts.

Eddie laughs shortly. “I’m gay, Richie. I’ve spent practically my entire life trying to convince myself otherwise, and I was even starting to think it was working. But then I came back here and as soon as I saw you again, I realized that I’ve been in love with you since we were kids. I think maybe I _still_ love you, even though I don’t really know you anymore. You don’t have to say anything, I just… wanted you to know. I’m not going to live a lie anymore.”

His chest feels tight by the time he’s done talking, like he’s about to start hyperventilating again. Richie’s eyes are practically bugging out of his head, and he’s unnervingly quiet for so long that Eddie starts to wish the hospital bed would fold shut around him and swallow him whole, until –

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me?” Richie practically shouts, loud enough that Eddie half expects the entire hospital staff to come running in. “Are you goddamn serious, Eddie, you were just gonna tell me all that and then _die_ on me?! How the hell do you think that would have made me feel?”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says, miserable and bewildered all at once. He hadn’t really considered it that way, but he supposes Richie is right: it would have been nothing short of cowardly to finally lay his cards on the table after all this time only to check out before Richie had a chance to do the same.

Richie shoots him a speculative look, his anger dissipating as quickly as it had arrived. “Tell me now.”

Eddie blinks. “Come again?”

“I’m serious,” Richie says. “You’re not dying anymore, and we might be a couple of old men now but we’ve still got plenty of time to get to know each other again.”

“Don’t do that,” Eddie snaps, and he’s mortified to feel hot tears prickling at the backs of his eyes. Apparently getting dismembered by something straight out of Lovecraft is a walk in the park compared to enduring Richie’s pity.

“Do what?”

“You don’t want me, you feel _sorry_ for me. I mean – come on, Richie, who are you trying to kid? You’re – you’re fucking Rich Tozier, for chrissakes. Man of a Thousand Voices, beloved by the great American public. You don’t want to be saddled with a one-armed cab driver for the rest of your life.”

“Whoa, just stop for a second, would you?” Richie holds up a hand, his forehead all creased up like he’s actually _disappointed_ , and Eddie suddenly feels about two foot tall. “First of all, I’m a comedian on late night cable; I’m not exactly Kim Kardashian out here. Secondly, I did my research on the rest of you losers before I came back to this dump and I know exactly how much that little app of yours bagged you last year, so don’t try and sell yourself short to me. You’re “just” a cab driver the same way that Mark Zuckerberg is “just” some internet nerd. But actually, I don’t give a shit how much money you make or how many arms you have, I’ve been crazy for you since the day I met you. I mean – _look_ ,” and then he’s rifling through his wallet, pulling out a square of paper and shoving it triumphantly in Eddie’s face.

It takes Eddie a moment to process what he’s actually seeing. It’s an old Polaroid, the border yellowed and the picture slightly distorted with age. The subject is still clear enough, though: it’s him and Richie, about eighteen years old by the looks of it, fast asleep on the sofa in Bill’s old front room. Picture-Eddie’s head is nestled on Richie’s shoulder, his face turned into the crook of Richie’s neck; he looks peaceful, Eddie thinks, content. Richie’s face is mostly obscured by his hair and glasses, but his whole body is angled towards Eddie, one arm wrapped almost protectively around his middle. The strip at the bottom bears a faded caption in Mike’s neat handwriting: _RT + EK, 1994._

“Where did you get this?” Eddie says slowly, his voice trembling a little. He can’t tear his eyes away from the image; they both look so _young,_ and his heart aches a little for the boys they once were and the way their lives turned out.

“Mike took it, that last night at Bill’s,” Richie says, and Eddie doesn’t need to ask him which night he means. The night before Richie left town, the night Eddie kissed him, the night everything changed. “I asked him if I could have it.”

“And you kept it all this time?”

“Yeah. I’ll be honest, I kind of forgot who you were after a while – used to drive myself crazy, trying to figure out what those initials stood for – but yeah, I kept it.” He exhales shakily, dragging a hand through his hair. “Why do you think I never married, never even managed to hold down a relationship for longer than a few months? It’s _you,_ Eddie. It’s always been you, even when I didn’t remember you. In sickness and in health, till death do us part. However the rest of it goes.”

“We’re not married, dipshit,” Eddie says – and oh, look, now he’s _actually_ crying, tears flowing freely over his cheeks. He wants to tell himself it’s just because of the shock, the morphine, the sheer fucking craziness of the last few days, but he’s not so sure. Richie reaches out to brush the wetness from his face, and Eddie feels as though his heart is about to shatter into a million pieces, the tenderness in the gesture almost more than he can bear.

“We could be, if you wanted,” Richie says, and Eddie can’t tell whether he’s joking or not. “I know this great lawyer who helped a buddy of mine out with a tricky divorce; you should come back to California with me when they let you out of here. Or we could go somewhere else: Vegas, New Orleans, wherever you want. I’m getting kind of sick of L.A., anyway.”

“So you’re saying we should just, what, drive off into the sunset together?” Eddie tries to picture it: him and Richie running off together, gambling away their fortunes at the casinos, frequenting anonymous dive bars in the French Quarter, and it takes less effort than he anticipated. It feels _right._ There’s the business to consider, but it’s not like he’s going to be driving anybody any time soon; maybe it would be good for him to take a step back for a while. His guys always did find it strange that their multi-millionaire boss insisted on staying behind the wheel, and thanks to the joys of the internet he can run things from just about anywhere in the world. Still… “What about your show?”

Richie waves a hand dismissively. “I’ll call my agent, tell him I’m taking some personal time. God knows we’ve earned a vacation. Carpe diem, baby.”

“Carpe diem,” Eddie repeats slowly, turning it over in his head. He knows that things won’t be as easy as Richie is making them sound: he still has a wife waiting for him back in New York, and he’s going to have to face her at some point. He’ll have to re-learn how to do everything with just one arm, and that’s assuming his recovery goes smoothly to begin with. Thanks to a lifetime of extreme hypochondria, he knows enough about amputations to be aware of the risk of infection, of phantom limbs, of the grueling amount of physical therapy he has ahead of him and the additional psychological damage he’s still likely to suffer.

But even with all of that, he can’t help feeling _hope_ for the first time in God knows how long. He’s alive, and Richie is alive, and they both remember everything this time around, and he thinks that maybe _this_ is their reward. That maybe they’ve just been handed the chance to start over and make up for nearly thirty years of lost time, and they’d be fools not to take it.

“You know, a vacation actually sounds pretty fucking good to me right now,” he says eventually, and Richie grins brighter than the sun, leaning over to ruffle his hair affectionately. He doesn’t pull his hand back, and his movements slow until he’s just kind of sifting his fingers through Eddie’s hair, which is probably all kinds of gross and sweaty from the amount of time he’s been lying in this bed, but Eddie can’t bring himself to care.

They sit like that for a while longer until Eddie feels himself starting to drift again, succumbing to the drugs coursing through his system and the soothing, repetitive motion of Richie’s petting. He tries to fight it, to stay awake so he can bask in this moment a little longer, but his eyelids feel heavier and heavier with each successive blink.

“Pretty sure you’re fighting a losing battle there, Eds,” Richie says, clearly trying and failing to hide his amusement. “Get some sleep.”

“You’ll stay?” Eddie slurs, too tired to be embarrassed by how needy and childish he probably sounds.

Richie gets up out of his chair and bends down to kiss Eddie on the forehead and then the lips, sweetly chaste, careful not to jostle him. He picks up Eddie’s hand as he settles back down, rubbing his thumb over the knuckles before he brings that to his lips, too.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. “Nothing could drag me away, not even an army of monster clowns. Not even the really scary nurse with the giant–”

“Beep beep, asshole,” Eddie says, just to make sure he gets the last word. He’s still smiling even as he finally gives up the fight and lets sleep pull him under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THEN THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER AND NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENED AGAIN, THE END.
> 
> In keeping with the updated setting of the new film, I like to think that Eddie and Richie made their fortunes as adults by inventing an Uber ripoff and hosting an SNL ripoff, respectively. Also, Richie is definitely the guy who would use portmanteau couple names for actual real people.
> 
> Thank you so much to everybody who's commented, left kudos, or just read and enjoyed this story; I'm generally pretty bad at responding in anything like a timely fashion but it means the world to me to know that people out there are reading what I write. I hope you enjoyed this last installment, and that you all have a great end of 2017/beginning of 2018.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr @[gayeddiek](http://gayeddiek.tumblr.com)


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